


Remember, Remember.

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Death, Drinking to Cope, Fluff, M/M, Phanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5891209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Numbing the pain for a while only makes it worse when you finally feel it."<br/>Dan tries to forget but he would never, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember, Remember.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever Phanfiction! I hope to do more in future, but please leave me any tips or criticism!

I.  
Dan hiccoughed into the complete silent flat, giggling dizzily as he leaned on to the headboard on his bed. He couldn't tell if he was giggling or sobbing, at this point. There were tears dripping down his face, but as they seemed to have become a constant stream ever since this evening, Dan didn't even raise a hand to wipe them away.  
His chest hurt so much. Every breath he took filled his body with a stinging pain, every sob feeling like a knife in his chest. The smell of alcohol in the air around him was making him feel sicker than he was already, but he knew he had nothing to expel from his system. He was dry heaving every little while, his throat red and raw.  
He didn't care that he was drinking. All he wanted to do was numb the pain. He didn't care about anything right now.  
Phil Lester had died today.  
His best friend, his partner in crime, boyfriend, teenage crush, idol, flat-mate, lover. He was his other half, his lion, his Phil. The other half of Dan-and-Phil.  
A new wave of tears were blinked out of Dan's eyes; his vision blurry as he took another swig of the disgusting, bitter WKD. He didn't want to be thinking about this. He was drinking to forget; to numb the pain.  
Phil. Phillip. Lion. Sunshine. Phillip Michael Lester. The names floated around inside his skull, ricocheting off the sides of his brain, sending him reeling.  
A flood of memories echoed around before Dan decided to accept it, and give in to the pain of the bitter-sweet memories.  
He couldn’t help but laugh when Phil was around. He couldn’t do anything about the butterflies in his stomach, or the giddiness whenever Phil cuddled up next to him on the sofa, or the blood from rushing to his face during those brief moments of grumpiness in the afternoon as Phil smothered him with tiny kisses.  
He couldn’t help the pain in his chest whenever he read the comments section in their collabs. Comment after comment of Phil being amazing, beautiful, funny, adorable, talented. In the hallways where he sat to sulk about his insecurities, Phil had always come to his rescue. They would laugh until their sides hurt but it still wasn't completely he same.  
He couldn’t help but stare when Phil was around. He loved staring intently at the skin on his neck, thinking of all the hickeys and love bites he had made on the pale, sensitive skin. He loved staring into his eyes as Phil smiled shyly at him, running his thumb over his knuckles; deceptively innocent eyes, green-yellow under the artificial yellow of street lamps and bright blue under the sun, but never one colour. He loved staring at Phil while his back was turned to him when he edited is videos, watching his shoulders bounced lightly to the beat of the music blasting from is headphones.  
He couldn't help but stare at Phil's soft, pink lips whenever he laughed or spoke or kissed or did other not so innocent things. He couldn't ever help but stare at his beautiful face when he woke up in the morning, hair sticking up everywhere, contrasting to his bright coloured bed sheets. Even when Phil wasn't facing him, he was so familiar with every inch of his beautiful body that he could tell him apart from a thousand strangers. The curve of his cheekbone, the crook of his neck, the dip in his back and the indents of the bones from his chest and back, the grainy texture of his hair, the way his knuckles bumped up, his beautiful pink lips, his striking blue-green-yellow eyes.  
When he first started dating Phil, he assumed he would grow accustomed to the sound of his gravelly voice in is ear when he woke up, or feeling of his lips sucking on the skin of his neck, or the way that his tongue sticks out adorably whenever he laughed.  
Dan was still hiccoughing but the sound had blended together with the soft sobs that escaped him every so often. He thought that he would have broken down worse that this when he thought back to the loving memories of his Phil.  
Then he remembered the way the words sounded when Phil first said them to him.  
"I love you."  
Dan let out a last little sob, sliding down into Phil's blanket that he had brought into the room. He inhaled deeply, his breath still shaky, and then fell asleep with a sigh. Tear tracks were still etched onto his face, but he smiled bitterly.  
_'The world may mock me, but it will never be able to remove these thoughts from my head.'_  
_'I love you.'_  
_'I love you, too.'_

II.  
Dan woke up at noon. _Four in the morning was never a good bedtime._ This thought was immediately contradicted as Dan remembered his favourite drunk morning moments with Phil. Him peppering little butterfly kisses all over his neck and face, and gigging together in the lounge with an anime playing that no one was paying attention to.  
Phil and him cuddling up together.  
Phil and him.  
A sudden, sharp pain jabbed Dan in the head. A dull thud in the front of his skull set in. _Here we go,_  
He sat up, and regretted it straight away. Back pains and hangovers were not very nice ways to start the day with. He trudged to the bathroom to wash up, feet moving as though they were made of lead, still half-asleep.  
Phil would have made him drink some water. Phil would have been there to gently take the bottle from him and cuddle with him until he slept. Phil would have re-adjusted the pillows so he wouldn't wake up with neck cramps. Phil would have been there in the morning, whispering random cute shit into his ear. _Phil would have been there._  
He reached the bathroom, eyes just about to brim over. He was crying, and he didn't care. He deserved to cry. _"Just let it out, Bear."_  
He stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were red and swollen, and his hair was in full curl mode, but he decided that he didn't give a shit. Cleaning his teeth and washing his face, he dragged himself to the kitchen for a glass of water. He wouldn't be able to stomach much else.  
\---  
After what felt like eternity, Dan had cleaned up the entire flat. Except for the one room. It didn't require much, seeing as the only room that was a mess as his, but he tidied up painstakingly slow. he had been working up all the courage he had. He felt like a teenager again, writing and re-writing text messages to his crush. Except he was an adult now, and this crush was the love of his life. And he was dead.  
He set the pen to the smooth cartridge paper, writing the first words tortuously slow.  
_Hello._  
_Well that's five characters out of the way._  
He smiled.  
_Hi, Phil. It's me, Dan. Your boyfriend. I know you only died yesterday and there hasn't been a funeral yet, but I feel that I want to write these to you._  
_There was so much that I never said to you._  
_We could have had many more "I love you"s if we'd started earlier, but we didn't. At least we had our sixty-second one the day before you died. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you._  
_All the "I'm sorry"s too. I'm sorry for you having to to be sorry one all the time. I'm stubborn prat and i know that I don't deserve you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._  
_I never really let you know how I felt about anything YouTube related. Did you know that I have cried almost every single time I read the comments from the collabs on each of our channels? I have. I'm sorry for being so envious and jealous. I know that you love me, but sometimes when I see how much your viewers love *you*, I just feel like I don't deserve you._  
_I uploaded your last video on your channel yesterday. It feels very closing. A Thank You video, for The Amazing Tour Is Not On Fire and The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire. TATINOF and TABINOF. You never even planned it to be like that. maybe you did, and you deliberately ran in front of that car. I don't want to think like that, though._  
_I'm scripting out a video that I'm going to upload to both our channels. I know that I never really properly script my videos, you always thought that it felt too rehearsed or too fake, but I need to for this one. I'm going to make another non-scripted one on my channel. I might cry, and I don't want to make the last video on your channel sad._  
_I love you so much. I just wish I could say it so you hear._  
_I love you,_  
_Dan, your bear._  
He quickly scrubbed at the tear rolling down his face with his sleeve, not wanting the ink to bleed over the paper.  
He folded the letter containing his love and slid it into an envelope. He drew hearts all over the entire thing, along with Phil's name.  
He put it into a box that contained two plushies: A lion and a llama.  
_'Bear,'_  
_'Lion,'_

III.  
It was in the afternoon, and Dan was sitting in the too-silent flat. He tried to blast Muse and put on anime, but to him it just sounded like white noise. He missed Phil singing along together with Matt Bellamy. He missed the times where they were both the opposite of sober and decided to imitate the voices in the animes together. It had ended up with them tangled in each other in the morning, on the sofa with their neighbours probably slightly irritated and uncomfortable.  
As Madness played, he ran his fingers over the words that they had typed out together for a year and a half. Gulping as he read the introduction to the book, he set it down, staring at all the pictures of Phil. When they first proposed the idea, neither of them had thought that they could keep it a bigger secret than their relationship.  
_'Are you sure you want to make this video?'_  
_'I think they deserve to know. We can do this now. We can tell them."_  
IIII.  
Dan just wished Phil was here. He thought that he had never craved the sound of someone's breathing, or the smell of aftershave, or the feeling of them snuggling together, so much.  
Shifting in his seat, he realised just how much he was used to having Phil next to him, crossing their ankles together. Even when Phil had gone back to see his family, he had always took comfort in knowing that Phil was going to be back.  
Fuck. Loneliness sucked.  
He Googled 'AmazingPhil'. The first thing that appeared was his channel, but it was the rest of the results that made Dan feel even shittier than he already was.  
'Fans Mourn the Loss of Internet Sensation.'  
'Successful YouTuber Dies in Car Accident.'  
'The Sudden Death of YouTuber Sends People Into a Frenzy.'  
Fuck this. Why couldn't they use his real name? Internet sensation. Successful YouTuber. Dan blinks back his tears. 'Dan Howell's boyfriend' has been a recent new name for Phil. He would have preferred it to these. He shuts the tabs in disgust.  
He logged onto Tumblr, typing 'AmazingPhil' into the search bar.  
As he expected the entire page was filled with long text posts, edits and fanart. The Phandom at least knew how to pay their respects.  
He shut his laptop down, staring blankly at all the tiny stickers that had collected over the years when Phil put them there without him noticing.  
He grabbed a pillow from Phil's bed, placing it in his lap as he opened the cover on his piano.  
_'Do you know any songs that require pressing two keys at the same time?'_  
_'Yeah, this is called "Dan Smells",'_  
IV.  
Dan awoke in a much more comfortable position, this time. Maybe it was because he had fallen asleep curled into the fetal position with Phil's pillow. Or maybe it was because he had fallen asleep in Phil's bed.  
The blinds weren't shut, but the virgin sunlight didn't hurt his eyes. Breathing into the covers, he shut his eyes on the soft light, focusing on the scent of Phil. The ridiculous flowery body wash, his aftershave. It was intoxicating.  
He got up sharply, suddenly feeling rather dizzy and sat back down again, not wanting another fainting incident. It was the funeral today.  
He stood up cautiously. Every step he took, he felt a sinking feeling growing in his tummy.  
_He could do this._  
\---  
_He couldn't do this._  
He was called up to say a few words about his boyfriend, to make the few people that had been informed to dip their heads for this man, who had died so young.  
'Phil is,' Dan began, feeling as though something was ripping through his body tearing at his flesh painfully. 'W-was.'  
He stole a glance up. PJ and Chris were sitting by each other. Chris had his arm around PJ, whose head was facing his lap and shoulders were vibrating. Chris was watching intently, his eyes red and puffy. He looked back at Dan.  
'I-I'm sorry. I c-can't do this,' he ran.  
He ran and ran and ran, and he remembered.  
\---  
_Dan looked through Phil's drawer slowly. He found a tiny black box, hidden inside one of_ **his** _pyjama shirts._  
_He yelped and launched the box onto the bed, as though it burnt him. The box landed on its side._  
_He gulped a few times, eyes already beginning to water once more._  
_Inside was a delicate black ring. The band was tremendously detailed._  
_Dan burst into tears._  
\---  
He walked into his flat, turning on his phone as he shuffled into Phil's room.  
He dropped his phone onto the drawers. He plopped onto the bed and started bawling. He faced the ceiling, his arms hugging the bed sheets to himself.  
_"I'm falling faster and faster,"_  
He remembered the time where he said 'I love you' first and accidentally.  
_"Into a delusional dizziness,"_  
His entire experience with Phil made him dizzy and happy to be alive.  
_"I waken,"_  
Phil was gone.  
_"A bird's singing in circles and circles around my head,"_  
He was going to propose.  
_"Oh whoa, whoa,"_  
"I do, Phil. I'm sorry. I love you."  
\---  
Dan finds a private video on Phil's channel.  
"I love you, Daniel James Howell. I love you , I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."  
He knows that it won't be the last time he cries because of Phil, but he will always remember.


End file.
